Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

DPRK Foreign Ministry Spokesman Demands U.S. Lift of Financial Sanctions

Korean Central News Agency of DPRK via Korea News Service (KNS)

    Pyongyang, August 26 (KCNA) -- A spokesman for the DPRK Foreign Ministry released a statement on August 26 accusing the United States of more persistently escalating its financial sanctions against the DPRK. It said:
    In the wake of the publication of Bush's statement calling for cutting off the financial channels of "rogue states", the U.S. Department of Treasury dispatched its deputy secretary to Southeast Asian countries including Vietnam, urging them to stop all sorts of financial dealings with the DPRK. In the meantime, it is tracing the accounts opened by the DPRK in banks of at least 10 countries including some Southeast Asian countries and Mongolia and Russia.
    This is, in essence, a gangster-like act of gravely infringing upon the sovereignty and dignity of its dialogue partner as it is aimed at seriously tarnishing the image of the DPRK and severing its economic ties with other countries.
    The U.S. has applied financial sanctions against the DPRK for nearly one year according to its domestic act, not in line with the relevant international law. It has, at the same time, cooked up a variety of "fictions on illegal dealings", failing to attain any results of investigation, much less producing any evidence to speak of. The U.S. has made contradictory remarks. While asserting that the present financial sanctions are irrelevant to the six-party talks as they are a measure for the enforcement of the act, the U.S. claimed that it would discuss the issue of lifting the financial sanctions, if Pyongyang comes out for the six-party talks.
    The U.S. negotiator, addressing the Congress, openly claimed that the financial sanctions are a lever for pressurizing north Korea to abandon its nuclear program. And its deputy secretary of Treasury urged other countries not to have any financial transactions with the DPRK, asserting that there is no difference between illegal dealing and legal one as far as the finance of north Korea is concerned. This is nothing but sophism making a mockery of and fooling the world people and a gangster-like doctrine.
    To lift the financial sanctions is not a mere business-like matter of taking back some amount of frozen money, but a political issue directly related not only to the six-party talks but to the implementation of the September 19 joint statement. It, therefore, serves as a barometer judging whether the U.S. is willing to make a switchover in its DPRK policy or not.
    By nature the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula surfaced due to the U.S. hostile policy toward the DPRK. The key to settling it is for the U.S. to give up its hostile policy toward the DPRK and opt for co-existing with it.
    In the joint statement issued on September 19, 2005, the DPRK committed itself to abandon its nuclear program and the U.S. to co-exist with it in peace. The DPRK, however, does not beg the U.S. to co-exist with it. It is the DPRK's stand to implement the agreement on the principle of equality. The DPRK likes to have the six-party talks more than ever as it will gain from the implementation of the agreement more than others.
    The U.S. financial sanctions against the DPRK are a stumbling-block lying in the way of the DPRK returning to the six-party talks.
    No sooner had the joint statement been published than the U.S. applied financial sanctions against its dialogue partner, completely scuttling the agreed agenda of the six-party talks and driving them to the present deadlock.
    The DPRK has clarified more than once that it will never go to the six-party talks, with "sanctions" put on it.
    The DPRK remains unchanged in this principled stand.
    A scrutiny into the U.S. loudmouthed "illegal dealings" makes it clear that they are sheer fabrication nothing in common with the nature of the socialist system of Korean style.
    The DPRK has perfected legal and institutional mechanisms banning such illegal acts as counterfeiting notes and money-laundering.
    The DPRK is neither a "law-breaking state" nor a "state counterfeiting notes" as claimed by the U.S. On the contrary, it has fallen victim to the issue of counterfeit notes and their circulation due to the U.S.
    The DPRK remains undeterred by any financial supremacy of the U.S. as it has been exposed to U.S. sanctions for several decades and maintains no economic relations with it. It is the height of folly for the U.S. to think that it can solve any issue by means of sanctions and pressure.
    There is strong opinion even in the U.S. that it is more realistic for the Bush administration to lift the financial sanctions and resume the six-party talks because they would not prove effective but escalate the stand-off between the DPRK and the U.S. and entail a horrible disaster. This is by no means fortuitous. All these facts go to clearly prove that the Bush administration is chiefly to blame for scuttling the six-party talks and straining the situation in the region and for putting the brake on the process to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula.
    Now that the Bush administration is escalating its pressure upon the DPRK through the tightened financial sanctions in a bid to keep itself politically alive, the DPRK is left with no other option but to take all necessary counter-measures to protect its ideology, system, sovereignty and dignity.